Symbolic Gestures
by Kamitra
Summary: Naruto has always been wary of his dreams. It's not that they're dangerous, but that he knows things from them that he shouldn't. Like the real history of the faded and obscure Ninja world. [AUish]


Notes: This was written quite a while ago... prompted by a reference book on symbols. I was particularly impressed by the way images and symbols change in meaning over the ages... and how some are purely symbolic, when the original action it was used for had long dissappeared. (AU)

The challenge of this story was to explain the passage of time in terms of something that most people take as "static" (that is, unchangeable) like a piece of fiction. How people, countries, ideas, and such change over decades, centuries, and even longer. If I were to write a sequel on this as a few have suggested, it would turn to angsty-yet-Narutoishly-optimistic, because unfortunately, Naruto has not changed with the times, and yet, is still himself. He's protected because of this -- because he doesn't stand a chance without it.

**Symbolic Gestures**

Naruto would dream sometimes. Sometimes they weren't dreams at all, but sometimes they seemed so real that they had to have been dreams.

Sometimes he remembers a time when the symbol of the leaf wasn't a symbol of renewal, blessings, and goodwill, but of something very different. A symbol that is now used for peace -- used to be used for battle.

Sometimes he remembers the story of how it was changed, but most of the time he doesn't. It was a dream, after all.

He still gets uneasy when he sees the Mist symbol, even though it's the symbol of acknowledgement and honor. Somehow he keeps imagining that it meant something very awful.

At least clouds still mean death. Especially since not all water is healthy and all that -- it makes sense that clouds can mean death from above. But it's not rain that he's afraid of... so why is does he feel like balking at the symbol of death?

And finally, the fan. The symbol of brother(or sister)-hood. But when he hasn't had enough sleep, Naruto sees something very different. Like hands, claws, or even the jaws of a snake. Naruto has a fear of snakes.

And it's not only symbols that show that something is wrong with his head -- he does strange things too. Almost like habit. He ties pieces of cloth around his head whenever he goes to take an exam... like a bandanna. People laugh because those are only used for coming-of-age ceremonies. It's like carrying around a diploma -- people just don't do that sort of thing. It's reassuring, though, and Naruto keeps doing it whenever he feels nervous about something.

And another thing he does is move his hands into weird positions whenever he's practicing his chakra work. For some reason it helps him concentrate, even though all his teachers say that they (hand seals, they call them) are completely unecessary. Obsolete, they say; "Hand seals are only used in special ceremonies, like the Leafsound Festival." He still does them.

Naruto also seems to have a special affinity for summons. He doesn't have any special chakra abilities and traditions handed down to him like in the Nara family, but for some reason, all summons will listen to him immediately, no matter how stupid the reason was for summoning to begin with. Even the snakes. Even though summoning is an act of friendship and trade, the summons treat him differently. Some are his friends... but others...

He asked Gamabunta about it once. All he would say was, "we have a debt to fulfill."

Naruto's life feels pretty good, though. He has weird dreams and acts like a weirdo sometimes, but he's never really alone, and people care for him. The Uchiha wisewoman was nice enough to give him a place to stay, and the Hyuuga family gave him a scholarship.

He's currently studying to be a historian, but sometimes his wild theories (delusions, some people call them; others, pure imagination) show up in his exam essays and his grades start to look really iffy. He specializes in ancient history... specifically, ninja history.

Except the other hard part is that not much is known about ninjas today. There's a lot of folklore and myth. Most of it, though, is under debate. Some state that people had changed their physiology so much that they could generate enough chakra to produce lightning (without the aide of an enhancer), etc., as evidenced by the thickness of the chakra pathways found in some families. Others state that it was probably just a mutation, and the primary use of chakra was done through channelling and projection.

Of course, that theory has just been upturned when the youngest son of the Uchiha wiseones proved to have the ability--after great amounts of training--to control and mold his chakra enough to actually use it as a weapon. But researchers are still working on that, so no answers are coming in yet.

Naruto doesn't say what he /really/ thinks it was like, though -- that in ancient times, it was such a mish-mash of different techniques, physiologies, training, teachings--and most of all, secrecy--, that there wasn't much of an apparent pattern in chakra usage until The Great Treaty, and Haruno Sakura began research on all types of jutsus within the five countries and beyond.

It was an expensive project, but she had somehow managed to argue that each family would have to give up at least half of their jutsus and allow for an examination of their physiology. Naturally, the head of the Mist went first. Or rather not-so-naturally, as at that time, this was a surprising move on the part of the "bloodthirsty" Mist.

But that's just a story... or did that really happen? Naruto has a feeling that none of that was ever in any textbook or discussion... and yet, he knows it happened. And even after... he knows it like a lecture. Like he was taught it almost before he was born.

Maybe he should be a fictional author.

Later he was to find out that he was not the first to have that idea.


End file.
